The Daily Telegraph - 27.08.2019

Rock horror! Reading

has gone mainstream

W

hat has proved an

exceptionally rewarding

festival for classical music

and opera reached its climax with a

mighty concert performance of

Wagner’s apocalyptic

Götterdämmerung – a work boldly

predicated on a crashing end to the

bad old order and the glowing dawn

of a purified new one. Would that life

were like that.

It was conducted by Andrew

Davis, now in his mid-70s and based

in North America. His British

appearances are few nowadays, and

this was a sharp reminder of what we

are missing: here was a reading of

wonderful fluency and lyricism,

never pompous but lacking nothing

in ultimate grandeur. Tempi must

have been fast (the first act came in,

according to my watch, at three

minutes under two hours; others

have taken 15 minutes longer), but

they never seemed rushed. The

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

was on its mettle throughout,

working extremely hard. There was

some beautiful wind playing; the

brass was marginally less confident.

A cast that would be the envy of

any opera house in the world had

Edinburgh Festival

goes out on an

electrifying high note

‘D

o you like rock’n’roll

music, Reading?”

bawled Foo Fighters

frontman Dave

Grohl, and for the

first time in its

history you didn’t know how Reading

would respond. For almost 50 years

Reading Festival – and, later, its Leeds

counterpart – has acted as a hub of

sonic rebellion, from the stoners and

acid biker freaks zoning out to

Wishbone Ash and Hawkwind in the

early Seventies to the punks, goths,

grungers, emos, ravers and

Britpoppers who have inhabited

alternative culture ever since. By the

time streaming suppressed musical

tribalism, however, Reading & Leeds

was too much of a behemoth to

downsize. Chasing the money, it has

embraced the new

generation of faux

renegades, acts that

adopt classic outsider

tropes – facial tattoos,

hair dye, swearing, hard drugs

• but are really performing within
  the confines of convention.
  The fact that Reading & Leeds
  Festival is now a mainstream pop
  event was obvious. The crowd was
  dressed for a San Antonio foam
  party. Wander randomly into the
  Radio One tent in search of brave
  new sounds and you were likely to
  stumble across Mabel’s mediocre
  bump and grind, or YouTube
  celebrity Joji doing a neo-soul
  version of the Toy Story theme tune.
  It’s become a tradition to post
  spartan Reading & Leeds posters
  featuring only the female-dominated
  acts on Twitter. This year, a poster
  including the acts that are genuinely

alternative would be similarly sparse.

The festival’s new populist ethos

was encapsulated by the appearance

of pop insurrectionists The 1975. They

indicated radical fourth-album

intentions by opening with their

Fighting spirit: Dave Grohl, top, delivered hits such as ‘My Hero’; Billie Eilish, below, drew a gargantuan crowd

Mistress of the

music: Christine

Goerke (pictured

with Josef Wagner)

thrilled as

Brünnhilde

GETTY IMAGES

been assembled. Excellent trios of

lugubrious Norns and frolicking

Rhinemaidens were complemented

by a rottweiler of an Alberich in

Samuel Youn; an unusually assertive

Gunther and Gutrune from the

piquantly christened Josef and

Amber Wagner, apparently no

relation to each other or the

composer; and a Waltraute of moving

eloquence in Karen Cargill. A

shout-out for a thrilling student

chorus of lusty Gibichungs, too.

In the principal roles, Ain Anger

presented a lean and mean Hagen, a

baleful presence who needed no

recourse to phoney histrionic

snarling to suggest his villainy.

Burkhard Fritz offered a more

prosaic Siegfried, scarcely

suggesting the ardent lover or the

amoral Aryan hero, but one who at

least sang all the notes correctly

without bleat or bellow.

Best of all was Christine Goerke, a

Brünnhilde of rare warmth and

humanity who thrilled us all in the

vengeful fire and brimstone of the

second act before her ecstatic

transfiguration and immolation in

the final act. Goerke is absolute

mistress of this music, matching a

rich middle register to an

electrifying charge above the stave. I

don’t think I’ve ever heard the

normally restrained Usher Hall

audience give anyone quite such a

tumultuous reception.

It’s good news that a recording of

this stupendous performance will be

broadcast on Radio 3 on September

23. Wagner fans must not miss it.

Edinburgh International Festival

Götterdämmerung

Usher Hall

★★★★★

By Rupert Christiansen

A children’s Prom hijacked

by terrifying eco-propaganda

A

nger might seem an odd

response to a Prom about the

simple beauties of apple blossom

and otters and ravens, decked out in

sweetly innocent folk song and vapidly

euphonious orchestral pieces, but it’s

entirely appropriate because this Prom

• ostensibly inspired by The Lost
  Words, the bestselling book by Robert
  Macfarlane and Jackie Morris about
  the magic potency of the names
  we give to the natural world – was a lot
  more than that. It used the book
  as cover for a statement of the most
  extreme form of eco-catastrophism,
  designed to terrify and intimidate
  the mostly young audience, who
  clearly lacked the maturity to
  challenge it.
  The statement came right at the
  outset, with a recording of Greta
  Thunberg, telling us that we were in
  the midst of the sixth mass extinction,
  that 200 species are dying every day,
  that we are all basically going to hell in
  a handcart. Just in case we missed the
  message, we were forced to hear the
  same words all over again, in a new
  piece by Jocelyn Pook entitled Yo u
  Need to Listen to Us, performed by the
  National Youth Choir of Great Britain
  and the Southbank Sinfonia.
  It was a tough call to turn the
  doom-laden horror of Thunberg’s
  message into an expression of limp
  hand-wringing, but somehow Pook
  pulled it off, with the aid of some
  astonishingly saccharine harmonies.
  I was so annoyed by the BBC’s
  blatant politicising of an event aimed
  at children, and the sly way it sugared
  a very bitter pill, that I found it hard to
  pay attention to the rest of the Prom.

And, frankly, the general air of naive

wonder did become a bit wearing; the

reality of “nature red in tooth and

claw” was carefully avoided.

Still, there were some enjoyable

things. The poems, accompanied by

suggestively sinuous dancing from

Thomas Carsley, were recited with

passion by Beth Porter and Caleb

Femi, among others. Jackie Morris

painted various animals in a few deft

strokes, projected on to a big screen.

We heard some wonderful nature-

inspired music, ranging from Vivaldi

and Beethoven to a clutch of recent

pieces some of which were anodyne,

but some – like the song Heron,

performed by the folk/world group

Spell Songs – invigorating. The

National Youth Choir were the heroes

of the evening, performing piece after

piece with focused intensity.

It’s unfortunate that the

supposedly impartial BBC turned a

promising event into an opportunity

for eco-propaganda.

Prom 49

The Lost Words

Royal Albert Hall

★★★★★

By Ivan Hewett

Doom-laden message: the National Youth Choir of Great Britain

CHRIS CHRISTODOULOU

Listen to this Prom for 30 days on BBC

Sounds. The Proms continue until Sept

14. 020 7070 4441; bbc.co.uk/proms

savage industrial punk new single

People, and yet still filled their

Friday headline slot with mildly

deconstructed takes on Hall & Oates,

INXS, the Friends theme tune and

Michael Bolton.

Elsewhere, the wannabe rebels

took over. Post Malone – looking like

a brutal prison overlord, sounding

like a snarly Ed Sheeran – headlined

on Saturday, determined to prove his

rock star credentials by smashing an

acoustic guitar amid such an

abundance of flames that it was less

gig, more oil refinery. No amount of

rhymes about gang violence,

prescription drugs and hard partying

could distract from his anodyne

soul-rap timbre, though; sometimes

marvellously melodic (Better Now,

Congratulations), often shot-bar

bland. He shared top billing with

Twenty One Pilots, who set fire to a

car, donned balaclavas and played

on platforms held aloft by the crowd

but nonetheless resembled the

moment Coldplay discovered

electronic dance music, but with

more of a reggae sound.

Of the pop interlopers, only Billie

Eilish, drawing a gargantuan crowd

waving black balloons, felt attuned to

Reading’s heritage. She was the

current mental health discussion made

flesh, singing cracked, crepuscular

electro noir about medication and

self-loathing, dressed for a skater punk

sanatorium. Veering into brutalist jazz

and industrial scat, she was living

proof that pop gets more interesting

when it’s depressed.

Rap fared well thanks to Dave’s

honeyed raps and Slowthai’s

ferocious gutter rants, and the outer

stages boasted exuberant indie

rockers Sports Team and Poppy, a

bubblegum meme singer backed by

white-faced metal gimps, virtually a

satire on the whole festival. But, save

for an hour of Royal Blood’s volcanic

blues rock on Friday, rock

redemption had to wait until Sunday.

Here Yungblud tore across the main

stage in pink socks and lingerie like

Keith Flint reborn, and Foo Fighters

delivered a 150-minute masterclass

in rock righteousness.

Complete with covers of AC/DC and

Queen’s Under Pressure, and an

appearance by Rick Astley for a Smells

Like Teen Spirit reworking of Never

Gonna Give You Up, the show was

framed as a rock’n’roll fightback, but

roar-alongs like My Hero and All My

Life felt like rock-era Reading being

shown its best bits.

During their set, The 1975 asserted

that rock’n’roll was dead. This might

be premature, but at Reading it’s

definitely in terminal decline.

Pop

Reading Festival

Richfield Avenue, Reading

★★★★★

By Mark Beaumont

The 1975 showed radical

intentions, but their set

included takes on the

theme tune from Friends

A recording of Greta

Thunberg told us that we

are all basically going

to hell in a handcart

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The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 27 August 2019 *** 23

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